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Wild Horse Herd Below Treasure Mountain, Nevada

Waller Farms
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Public Lands Issues of Concern
to BCHC Los Padres Unit



Great Basin Guides has relocated out of the Great Basin into the Central Coast of California.. We still think the Great  Basin is the best part of America and we plan to spend a great deal of time in it. But time moves forward and events have brought us to the Central Coast. Since we have moved, our focus has changed, slightly. We want to wander more of the

Great American West

Keeping in mind, that not all who wander are lost. In fact, if you spend your life wandering you are in exactly the right place. On these pages you will find tales of trip, interesting stories, a few poems a trail project or two.

Updates and new information in the site will occur as I get to them, check back often!


We are, Richard and Laurie Waller
Laurie has opened a massage shop in the village of Arroyo Grande
Is it the best Zinfandel in California? Could be, give these folks a visit: Toucan Wines

The Other California

Stories and or photos of our travels
 Waller Family History
California is thought of as crowded, as full of people roads and buildings. There is another California, a land area bigger than most states, empty or nearly empty of people. On these pages we are going to explore, the other California, both historically and currently. Check back, I will add to this site over time. These essays and or photos are of trips outside the West
 Lionel Duncuff Waller my grandfather, came to California from Britain about 1907. He became a successful flowerseed grower. I am fascinated by he and his accomplishments. On these pages I have information on him, and our family history.
The Historic Sisquoc and Sespe Country A Slide Show of our Cathar Trail 6 Days in France on Horseback. Historical photos of Waller Flowerseed Company
Point Reyes, essayPhoto Essay, Fort Churchill, Nevada
 		Diary of Kern River Pack Trip 1934
San Luis Obispo County Wilderness Lands In March 2002 we left our snowy Truckee home for 2.5 months sailing the Sea of Cortez
 The Santa Ynez River Canyon Cabins
 Machesna Wilderness.
Assorted Photos taken in Garcia Wilderness
Santa Lucia Wilderness 
 Short biography of Lionel Waller
2009 Pack Trip into Dick Smith Wilderness, Madulce Camp, showing the effects of the Zaca Fire

 One Soldier's War, the wartime diary of John Waller, my father
 BCHC Spring Ride
Photos from a summer 2010 pack trip into the Little Kern River

Jeep trip to Death Valley 2006

The Dualsport Wildflower Trail

Arroyo Grande,SLO, Prefumo Canyon, Avila Beach motorcycle loop

Death Valley 2005, from our snowy home to DV


Death Valley Jeep Trip

Death Valley 2011




Trips and tales from Nevada and the West
Llama pack trip into the Table Mountain Wilderness North Twin River Llama Trip

A slide show of photos from that trip,
An exploration of the scene and background
of a Nevada labor dispute, that resulted in a
massacre, near Eureka, Nevada, 1879		 Rambling around Nevada
Rimrocked in the Monitor Range
Manly and Rodgers did not walk out
of Death Valley over Rodgers Pass
 Fun Facts about our Public Lands Horse packtrip into the upper Reese River
An Essay on "The Last of the Desert Frontiersmen."


Slide Show
The Condor Trail North Section

and SloCrest Trail, the Western 

50 miles
The SLOCREST Trail
is a multiple use trail, when complete it will run from the sea at Morro Bay to the Carrizo Plains. The trail is currently being mapped and laid out.  It will be located mostly on public land, but there will be a few sections of private land, gaining easements will be an ongoing process.

For maps and photos, please click on this link; SLOCREST Trail

 The Coast Range Trail
is a multiple use trail that will go from the Pacific Crest Trail in the Angeles National Forest to rejoin the PCT in the far north of California

Trail maps link

 


View from Hi Mountain Lookout along SLOCREST Trail toward Pacific Ocean

Our project is to create a trail along the crest of the Coast Range Morro Bay to the Carrizo Plains.
As was done with the initial planning for the PCT the trail will be a collection of existing trails and dirt roads with some trail building required. As the trail comes into existence there should be additional trail building to move the trail off of the roads.
Another problem to surmount is the private land which will need to be crossed. The PCT again offers lessons here. About 300 miles of the 2600 mile long PCT is located on Private land.
This trail will offer open up the vast wild lands that lie in central and eastern San Luis Obispo County. 



 

  
"Having covered the entire length of the project by various modes of transport, hiking, biking, packing, and chasing wild steers on the Chimineas at one end to gathering cows and calfs at the Bernardo ranch on the other it is hard for me to imagine a more diverse and precious landscape to traverse within the county. "

Bruce Hilton, San Luis Obispo County Parks Commissioner
Forum on subjects covered in this website
 This to me, sums up the "New West", I like a few others was born a hundred years too late.

Things of Intrinsic Worth
written by  Wallace McRae

Remember that sandrock on Emmells Crick
Where Dad carved his name in 'thirteen?
It's been blasted down into rubble
And interred by their dragline machine.
Where Fadhls lived, at the old Milar Place,
Where us kids stole melons at night?
They 'dozed it up in a funeral pyre
Then torched it. It's gone alright.
The "C" on the hill, and the water tanks
Are now classified, "reclaimed land."
They're thinking of building a golf course
Out there, so I understand.
The old Egan Homestead's an ash pond
That they say is eighty feet deep.
The branding corral at the Douglas Camp
Is underneath a spoil heap.
And across the crick is a tipple, now,
Where they load coal onto a train,
The Mae West Rock on Hay Coulee?
Just black and white snapshots remain.
There's a railroad loop and a coal storage shed
Where the bison kill site used to be.
The Guy Place is gone; Ambrose's too.
Beulah Farley's a ranch refugee.

But things are booming. We've got this new school
That's envied across the whole state.
When folks up and ask, "How's things goin' down there?"
I grin like a fool and say, "Great!"
Great God, how we're doin'! We're rollin' in dough,
As they tear and they ravage The Earth.
And nobody knows…or nobody cares…
About things of intrinsic worth.

® Wallace McRae. All Rights Reserved. From Things of Intrinsic Worth and Cowboy Curmudgeon and Other Poems by Wallace McRae. 

Please visit The Western Folk Life Center, more people doing good work.

 


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